If the Prohibited 5th Degree looks familiar to you that is because you might have seen it before. VMR Products recently re-branded its V2 Pro Series 7 with a concentrates cartridge instead of a liquid cartridge. The product comes in a ton of new very snazzy colors such as bone (white), jade (teal), struck (purple) and singed (black). I have used the Series 7 in the past and it was always my favorite vaporizer on the market…and trust me I tried them all.
The Prohibited 5th Degree Vaporizer does it all! Out of the box, you can used this multi-function device to either vaporize dry herb or concentrates by simply swampping out the magnetic drop-in cartridges. I honestly love these magnetic connectors cartridges. It makes it so easy to swap out cartridges. The 5th Degree Kit comes stocked with one cartridge for dry herb and one for concentrates and a recessed chamber for cartridges that eliminates the risk of leaks or breaks.
The Dry Herb Cartridge boasts the fact that it features “the fastest heat up time of any vaporizer”. It is fairly quick for sure. The multiple clicking every time to get into the modes is a little annoying I have to admit but I have been using it for a while and it almost feels natural after awhile. The Concentrates Cartridge can used for shatter, wax, oil, and other similar concentrates. The heater featured has a Dual-Quartz and Titanium heater to produce the thickest and smoothest vapor.
Even though I mention that the multiple clicks get annoying but what doesn’t get annoying is the smart technology this devices uses that recognizes each type of cartridge automatically and then heats to optimal vaporizing temperature without guessing. You get three different temperature settings that allow you adjust for yourself.
Dry Herb and Consentrates not enough? You can easily uprade your Prohibited 5th Degree Vaporizer with an optional Dabber and E-Rig Concentrates cartridges. There is no literally no contest with this product. You can compare it to other devices like PAX 3, Firefly 2, DaVinci IQ, Dr. Dabber Boost and Dipper and it comes out on top every time! So the rebranding from the Series 7 may not be drastic besides its cartridge inclusion but it is still no question my go-to vaporizer.
Starring: Chloe Grace Moretz, Ron Livingston and Liev Schreiber
Directed by: J. Blakeson
Rated: PG 13
Running time: 1 hr 52 mins
SONY Pictures
Our Score: 1 out of 5 stars
The following plea is for Chloe Grace Moretz: “PLEASE FIND A NEW AGENT!”
After a promising career that began with great performances in such films as “Kick Ass,” “Let Me In” and “Hugo,” in the past couple of years she has starred in such stinkers as the remake of “Carrie” and the “I’m not dead, I’m in a coma” film “If I Stay,” which had the distinction of being, in my opinion, the worse film of 2014. Now, apparently, she’s decided to make my job easy by showing up in, what I’m sure will be, among the worse films of 2016.
Cassie Sullivan (Moretz) is your typical youthful high school girl. She likes to hang with her friends and holds a secret crush on the captain of the football team. But she’s also a good girl, coming home from parties before curfew and looking out for her little brother Sam (Zackary Arthur). Then the aliens come. The end! Sorry. Sadly, it isn’t that easy.
A film only in the sense that it’s being shown in theatres, “The 5th Wave” tells the story about what can happen when you reveal the BIG ending 20 minutes into the film and apparently forget what the words “continuity” and “believable” mean. As the title maintains, there are five waves. The first wave has alien craft hovering over various cities. The second takes out all sources of power. Then the Pharaoh declares that all first born male children are to be killed. Not really. Just seeing if you were paying attention.
How do I hate thee, “5th Wave?” Let me count the ways. Let’s begin with the jaw dropping idea that, when there is an imminent alien invasion, we will continue to send out children to school. When there is no more electrical power or running water we will continue to appear freshly shaved and newly bathed. And when the world does come to an end, the only thing worth salvaging will be Slim Jims. Actually, I like the Slim Jim idea. Director Blakeson (who only goes by his first initial, J – and can you blame him? If I was associated with this film I wouldn’t give my full name either) has cobbled together a hodgepodge of bad plot lines and stretched them out for almost two hours.
Sadly, the fault is not all his (or, for all I know, hers). I also blame the three screenwriters who created these horrible tropes. I can’t believe Akiva Goldsman helped write this thing. This is a man who won an Oscar for writing “A Beautiful Mind,” adapted two John Grisham novels for the screen and does great work for Ron Howard. Of course, he also wrote “Batman and Robin” and the upcoming FIFTH “Transformers” film. OK, maybe I can believe it. Speaking of Oscar, if they gave away an award for most continuity errors in one film, this baby would sweep the category. Just off the top of my head, here are three to look for:
1. While heading for a certain destination, Cassie remarks that she is 30 miles from her destination. After walking for a day or so she comes across a sign that tells her she is 43 miles away. At least the sign points her in the right direction. That being said, a couple days later, when she asks how far she is, the answer is now 60 miles.
2. Early in the film Cassie is given a gun, which she later fires until the slide locks, indicating the weapon is empty. Next time you see it, it’s fully loaded.
3. Remember when I said that all power (electrical, gas, etc) has been eradicated? Cassie comes across an abandoned Jeep on her travels and hops in to rest. Thankfully the dome light is working properly so she can see better.
If you’re still interested in the film, you’re a better person than I am. Pays your money and takes your chances. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Debuting in 2003, The Venture Brothers follows the animated misadventures of super scientist and former “boy adventurer,” Dr. Thaddeus ‘Rusty’ Venture, his Hardy-Boy-like teen sons Hank and Dean, and their self-proclaimed arch nemesis, The Monarch. The show has created an amazing universe of heroes, villains and henchmen throughout its first four seasons while sending up everything from Johnny Quest to Hunter S. Thompson. Leading up to this Sunday’s fifth season premiere on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, creators, co-writers and stars, Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer got on the phone to discuss the show’s diverse roster of characters, super science, and the challenges of animating convincing tin foil jokes.
Lauren Damon:Your show revolves around a lot of Super Scientists, is there anything in actual modern science that’s freaked you out or sounded like something from the show? Doc Hammer: I’m personally not that educated. So I’m personally not up on actual scientific discovery. Jackson Publick: I have recently subscribed to Popular Science. Doc: So he knows all the things that are popular. Jackson: I’m super excited that they might be figuring out warp speed and when they grew a human ear on a mouse’s, I’ve never forgotten that.
LD: How about the 3D printers? Jackson: I’m not that excited by the 3D printer—Somebody showed me a Green Lantern ring they made with a 3D printer the other night. Actually it was a White Lantern ring, calling it a “White Power” ring, which is weird! Doc: Do you have to wear glasses for the 3D printer? Jackson: No, it’s a printer that makes a 3D object for you. Out of like, resin or something, it just carves this thing for you. Doc: Oh yes. You know what? Those are more like 3D fax machines than they are 3D printers.
LD: You have so many characters on the show, do you find that you have favorites to write or watch interactions between? Doc: Oh yeah, you can tell just by watching the show. Jackson: Yeah, you can tell who we’ve turned into pairs, we like those guys. Doc: And you’ll start seeing pairings that are not appropriate. Like Hank and 21 for some reason are weird pairing… Jackson: Yeah, yeah. Doc: They’ve been together and we kind of keep throwing them together because they interact well. Because they both have this kind of love and exuberance. And then there are just classic pairs. I mean 21 and 24. Even though we murdered one… Jackson: I like when we put 21 and the Monarch together. Doc: 21 and the Monarch is another…I think when we put them with The Monarch, he was trying to hang out with them…That’s when we realized these guys will interact well because they’re so different. Jackson: And the power dynamics of their relationship— Doc: Yea. Jackson: ‘The creepy boss is trying to be my friend now…I don’t know what to say, he shoots guys sometimes when he doesn’t like what they say.’ Doc: Yeah, and weird combinations show up. Billy and Doc are funny because Billy dresses Doc down a lot. It’s an odd combination— Jackson: Also he lifts him up a little bit. Doc: He does! He does, because he fanboys on him. But at the same time he— Jackson: Yea he’s like ‘I can’t believe that’s what a fucking mess the thing I’m fanboying about has become!’ Doc: Yeah, it’s a weird thing. It’s a weird thing because he loves Rusty Venture but I think he can barely tolerate Dr. Venture. Jackson: ‘Please try once try to be what you used to be!’ Doc: [In Billy Quizboy’s voice] “I used to love you and you’re nobody! You’re a horrible person!”
LD: Last season, with the death of Henchman 24, Henchman 21 went through so many changes, did you anticipate such an arc when you singled out these henchmen at the beginning? Doc: Oh no, those two guys were anonymous henchmen! Jackson:Yeah, we just got sick of them being anonymous. And we liked two voices we did. Doc: Yeah they were made up on the spot. I mean it was just two voices that we used to do while reading people’s emails. [Both laugh] So we just put them in the show. I mean, I remember when it first happened, you know Jackson was trying to do that every time we would get a nerdy e-mail. He would get like 21 and then he did that weird Ray Romano voice. We just did it not knowing that these characters would be around for ten years.
LD: What type of e-mail would instigate the Romano voice? Jackson: It was just him. I think we would just pick on him because we had like watched like past episodes— Doc: We would pick on him and we would use his use his voice for just being not us but not being a character on the show. But now we can’t. Jackson: Right. To express the opinion of someone—usually a negative one. [in Henchman 24’s Romano voice] ‘HEY WAY TO GOOOOO’ Doc: ‘GOOD JOB.’ That kind of crap.
LD: And, as opposed to 21, which character do you think has changed the least over the course of the show? Doc: Has changed the least? Doc, actually. Jackson: Yeah. Doc: He’s gone through a lot of revelations but his basic character has not changed so much. Even Brock has had more changes than Doc has and Brock is rock steady. Jackson: Even Hank has had more changes. Doc: Hank, the boys, have had a lot of changed.
LD: Your characters have such great names, working on this for ten years are you just constantly thinking of new potential characters? Doc: It’s like a bi-annual thing. Jackson: Yeah, I forget the good ones… Doc: I think both of us have notebooks filled with idiot names and then there are actual documents of names of episodes that don’t exist. Like “Return to Spider Skull Island” was just a bad episode name that we wrote around.
LD: Does that happen often? Doc: More than it should. I don’t know about often. Jackson: Probably yeah, like two episodes out of every season we like, just have a working title the whole time we’re making it and then when we’re making the credits, we have an argument about what to name it and then we both make a list of about forty things and try to hone in on one. Doc: Oh yeah. The amount—just like the season premiere, we both probably wrote forty different titles for. All of them would have been fine in anybody else’s book, and of these eighty, of the eighty titles that we came up with “What Color is Your Cleansuit?” was the one that we liked. Which is insane. That was just a good one for us.
LD: Any names from season five that you’re particularly excited about that you can share? Doc: We’re very particularly excited about season five, but we can’t give out any spoilers because season five is coming and the episodes themselves— Jackson: Oh! You can drop a name out, can’t you? Doc: What? Titles? Characters? Jackson: Or name. Doc: Go ahead! I’m not gonna do it. I have a firm line on spoilers. But you can do it. Jackson: We’ve already told people that there is an Augustus St. Cloud. Which we were excited about him this season. He exists. What’s the best episode title do you think? Doc: Best episode title?! Pick yours…Mine are awful. Jackson: [laughing] Doc: I have awful episode titles. They’re always awful. Name one of yours. One of yours that isn’t clever or just stupid. Those are my favorites. Jackson: Right. Doc: “O. S. I Love You” is a good title. Jackson: There ya go. Doc: That’s not bad.
LD: You’ve had a lot of gross stuff on the show—half-formed clones and skinsuits are jumping to mind—has there been anything that’s made you as grateful as I am that it’s all animated? Doc: Like disgusting things that happened? Well nobody wants to see anybody turn into a caterpillar, we did that in episode three. Jackson: Oh that would look so much better if we did it in episode five. Doc: Oh, right? Yeah… Jackson: It really just kind of looked like he was wearing a caterpillar costume, it was very just flat and stiff back then. Doc: Some of the things that we do are bad ideas. Like we make a lot of jokes that really don’t work as well in cartoons as we think. Like we made a terry cloth joke. And you can’t animate terry cloth. It looks just like color. Jackson: Right, or tin foil. We did eventually get good tin foil though… Doc: We kept asking for tin foil and eventually we got tin foil. Jackson: We did the worst tin foil hats for season one and then we did like amazing ones last season that the Korean studio even called us and went ‘Hey, can you simplify the tin foil design please?’ It was like five hundred facets of tin foil… Doc: And you couldn’t really move it. You could only draw it once and then have tin foil floating. The first season just looked like a gray hat— Jackson: Like a gray walnut shell is what it looked like. Doc: Yeah, you knew it was tin foil. But you can’t make tinfoil jokes, you can’t make terry cloth jokes— Jackson: My god, I want to make corduroy jokes so bad! Doc: And you can’t show corduroy because you can’t really animate corduroy… Jackson: I know! Doc: We can barely get a car to turn the corner nicely. We’re never gonna get corduroy on that screen.
Venture Brothers premieres Sunday, June 2nd on Cartoon Network. Also making a return this year is the show’s exclusive weekly Shirt Club, not seen since season three. More info can be found, here.
In the meantime, Adult Swim has released a full four-season recap video hosted by Henchman 21 to get you all ready for the new season!
